Gender Differences in the Impact of Empowering Leadership on Subordinate Outcomes

Abstract

Over the past two decades, researchers have called for studies on how, why, and when empowering leadership is effective. Based on social role theory, we examined the moderating roles of leader gender and subordinate gender and the mediating role of identification with the leader in effectiveness of empowering leadership. We collected multi-source data from 53 leaders and 266 subordinates. Result suggested that the positive relationship between empowering leadership and subordinate’s leader identification was stronger for female leaders than for male leaders but weaker for female subordinates than for male subordinates. Among the four types of gender composition dyads, the positive relationship was the weakest for male leader-female subordinate dyad. In addition, subordinates showed higher in-role performance and more extra-role voice behavior when they were highly identified with the empowering leader. Contributions and limitation are discussed.